Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “He’s right, this is a trick,” she said, very quietly. “There’s more to it than protecting my suitor. I had to get you out of Christopherson’s hands.”

  “Wouldn’t he take poorly,” Jeremiah said, “to you helping me to escape?”

  “His whole plan rests upon my genius,” Jackson stated flatly, without a trace of egotism. “He can take my help upon my terms. And after your revelations, which he did not bother to deny, furthering his agenda does not concern me.”

  “What does concern you, then?” Jeremiah said. “If not saving your man—”

  “Preserving your dignity,” she said. “Quickly now: do you wish to end as a rat in their labs, or as a cog in Christopherson’s plans?”

  Jeremiah’s mouth opened. This was more than just mercy: Jackson had reminded her that true Liberation came with choices, hard choices. Even now, racing towards her inevitable and ignominious end, she still had options: a chance to choose its nature.

  Jeremiah straightened as much as she could and looked Jackson in the eye.

  “If I cannot fight,” she said, “let me run.”

  Jackson nodded curtly and reached for the valve to stop the steam.

  “I think I’ve got it,” Simeon called from above.

  “We shall be there directly,” Jackson said, lifting Jeremiah again.

  Simeon rejoined them at the hatch, slipping one arm under Jeremiah’s shoulder, then reaching out with one foot to kick at the lever.

  “Oi!” Jackson said, batting his foot away with one hand, then reaching for the lever herself. “Show a little respect for my handiwork.”

  The lever fell. Bolts shot back into the frame. A sudden spray of fog hissed in around the rim of the hatch, and Jackson threw a gloved hand to her mouth with a curse. Then the huge hatch groaned and swung slowly outward, counterweights within the frame rising around it as it fell. Jackson released Jeremiah, and she fell into Simeon’s arms with a cry, knocking them both off balance for a moment.

  “Ow!” Jeremiah said, wincing. “Show a little respect for the dead.”

  But Jackson had already stepped out onto the gangplank, drawing a second deranger from a hidden pocket and holding her stopclock with the other. But she didn’t turn or run or disappear; she just stood there, listening.

  Simeon cursed and tensed, then went quiet and still. He glanced at Jeremiah, and Jeremiah nodded. She suspected he’d realized at the same time what Jackson had done: she’d taken point. Landing in a new time was her bailiwick.

  Jackson remained there, listening, for agonizingly long seconds even as the Machine groaned under them. “All clear,” she said at last, secreting the gun in a fold of her dress, but keeping the stopclock at the ready. “We can disembark—”

  “You’re a cautious one. Have things ever gone so sour,” Simeon said, lifting Jeremiah’s arm up over Jackson’s shoulder, “that you’d be willing to dive back into the Machine even if it was about to roll off a cliff?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jackson said, without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Even if it meant you would die?” Jeremiah said.

  “Even if it meant I would die,” Jackson said. “One encounter, in particular, was . . . well, I survived, perhaps I was even bettered by it, but don’t underestimate how sour these alternate realities can turn—oh. I . . . I suppose you know that, Commander.”

  Jeremiah scowled. “You’re telling me.”

  They were in a huge warehouse, nearly as large as the chamber which they had just departed. Jeremiah immediately could see this was Simeon’s universe, or something close to it: the walls were concrete and glass, lined with banks of machinery and pipes, all lit or blinking with electric lights.

  The Machine groaned again, and the three of them darted forwards as the gangplank slid out from under them. They turned and watched the Clockwork Time Machine tip backwards into a vast open chasm, like an empty swimming pool for a giant.

  As the huge diving bell of the Machine slipped from view, Jeremiah saw beyond it an even vaster machine, a giant doughnut of brushed metal and painted pipes and carefully arrayed wires. Bigger than a slice of the Prince Edward, it stood upright in the vast concrete chasm. It was so large that the three-story building in front of it appeared no bigger than a stack of sugar cubes.

  Then the Clockwork Time Machine fell, the gangplank retracting, the top knobbly prong of its “jack” shape disappearing from their view as the Machine flipped backwards off the ledge. Almost immediately, it slammed to a halt on a wide concrete shelf that its own bulk had hidden from their view, the prongs of the jack absorbing the impact on mammoth springs. A moment later, the Machine’s diving bell rotated within its complex outer housing, coming to rest with the entrance facing them—with the gangplank retracted and the hatch closed.

  Simeon cursed. “You knew that was there,” he said. “You planned that!”

  “Down to the millimeter,” Jackson said, looking quite smug. “And not just the landing, but that fabulous autoretracting hatch, if I do compliment myself.”

  “But we can’t get back inside now,” Simeon said.

  “Not before Lord Christopherson follows us here in force,” Jackson said. “Did you really think I’d just give up my Machine? You’re not ready for it—”

  “And Christopherson is?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Not even Christopherson has all my secrets, though not for want of asking,” Jackson said. “Only I can program the navigation gears—”

  “You lot are early,” said Ryder—Lord Christopherson’s right hand man. He’d stripped to his waistcoat and was striding towards them, black hair flapping up around his shoulders, kneading a rag in his hands and with grease on his rolled-up sleeves. “I expected the ZR-101 first—”

  Then Ryder stiffened, his jaw clenching. He tossed the rag aside, hand shooting towards his hip—but his blaster tumbled from his hand as twin green rays struck him in the chest, and he crumpled back in a spray of static-raised hair.

  “Oh, bugger me,” Jackson said, deranger raised. “We slipped a geartooth—”

  “You’re fast on the draw, woman,” Simeon said, raising his deranger as well.

  “What I am is an arrogant twat,” Jackson said, and Simeon and Jeremiah both flinched at the boffin’s sudden, uncharacteristic rage. “Slip a notch on a gear, shift a quanta of time—and hoist me on my own petard! I knew there was a loop, I knew it had to be resolved—”

  “I thought I heard the central gear skip,” Jeremiah said.

  “Oh, did you now? So did I—and ignored it! No, I was so busy congratulating myself on navigating to millimeters in space I neglected six hours of time. Hubris, atë. Atë, atë, atë!” Jackson cursed—then turned to face them. “I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I meant to give you enough time for Simeon to spirit you away, but I’ve brought you here just in time—”

  And then from above there was a clap of thunder and a tremendous rushing wind, the rising roar of a thousand trains that signaled the onset of a tornado. But the sound of the tornado soon dissipated . . . leaving only the humming of thermionic engines.

  ———

  “—for Lord Christopherson to arrive,” Jeremiah finished.

  52.

  End, Run

  “THAT CAME HERE by itself?” Simeon said. “Your invisible airships are also time machines?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jeremiah said distantly. “That’s how we pursued my uncle here—”

  “Damn it!” Simeon said, pulling out his cell phone. “No signal—”

  “Jammed,” Jackson said. “And we’ve cut the signal wires—you’ll find no phone, no Internet, no way to call out at this facility.”

  “Where are we?” Simeon said.

  “The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,” Jackson said, glancing at Jeremiah—and something in that pitying look made Jere
miah grow cold. “I’m so sorry—I meant to deliver you to safety, but I’ve delivered you into their hands.”

  “I can still fight my way out,” Simeon growled.

  “Against seventy men?” Jackson said. “If Ryder’s here, that means they followed the plan—”

  “We can still find help,” Simeon said, glancing about, “if we’re on the Stanford campus—”

  “We’re not,” Jackson said. “The Accelerator is an ‘atom smasher’ three kilometers long, half buried in the hills and surrounded by pasture. No one can hear you, and Lord Christopherson has taken the whole facility—”

  “We’re still in the Bay Area,” Simeon said. “Millions of people—”

  “Who can’t fight a time machine,” Jackson said. “If they followed the plan, they took the installation by force at nine last night and dropped the facility’s staff off tomorrow. We arranged this event to happen almost simultaneously with the affair at the CDC, so no-one’s even yet suspicious. Even the equipment they’ve stolen has arrived in an eyeblink. This night is theirs.”

  “But why?” Jeremiah asked. Her voice wavered as the thing on her back creaked and dug into her more. “What’s the objective? What is this place?”

  Jackson lowered her head. “The very last place I should have brought you,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an arrogant—”

  “What’s going to happen?” Simeon said.

  “The end of the plan,” Jackson said. “This is where it was to mature.”

  The Scarab convulsed on her back. “Oh, God,” Jeremiah said, as a spasm of its fear and hunger went through her. “This is where you mean to lobotomize us—”

  Jackson’s eyes widened—then shifted to Simeon. “Enough talk. You have to get her out of here—at the very least, far from that,” she said, pointing at the vast donut of machinery in the great concrete chasm. “We hold the grounds, but there’s a tunnel that feeds this machine, the so-called capture ring. Follow that until you find the linear accelerator gallery. It’s kilometers long, with hundreds of exits—surely you can use that to get her to safety.”

  Quickly Jackson led them around the perimeter of the chasm, whose scale played tricks with even Jeremiah’s eyes. Simeon shifted his grip, and Jeremiah whimpered as the Scarab dug in further, but then she grimaced and looked around, trying to keep her wits about her.

  From this vantage point, an ant on the lip of that giant industrial sink, Jeremiah could see a nest of new machinery standing before the donut’s center—Victorianan equipment, brass and gears and vacuum tubes in a fantastic array, like the Zodiac disc the Scarab had incarnated in.

  Around that central disc stood a ring of frozen, hulking forms—silhouettes half-animal, half-machine, still as statues, all covered in finely filigreed copper armor that the thing burrowing inside her recognized as stolen Scarab technology.

  And at the center of it all, at the confluence of Victorianan, Americanan and Scarab technology, was a brutal X frame, like the one she’d been spread-eagled in minutes ago and a universe away—with a vicious drill poised behind the clamps that would hold her head.

  “Oh, God,” Jeremiah said, and she wasn’t sure if it was her or the Scarab.

  At the far side of the concrete chasm, Jackson led them down a narrow series of metal steps until they reached another complex of equipment. The grey machines and blinking lights surrounded a small, bare metal pipe . . . that stretched off seemingly forever down a dark shaft.

  “The South Tunnel of the capture ring. It runs all the way to the accelerator . . . I think,” Jackson said. “The accelerator itself is a three-kilometer long shaft under a series of outbuildings. The far end is almost certainly guarded, but against external assaults, understand?”

  “I understand,” Simeon said. “I take it you’re not coming with us?”

  “No,” Jackson said firmly.

  “Good,” Simeon said and shot her in the chest. He caught her smoothly and lowered her to the deck, relieving her of her deranger. “What?” he said, glancing at Jeremiah. “That was cover. Now she can say she was coerced.”

  “I did not say anything,” Jeremiah said, grimacing.

  Simeon helped her into the tunnel. The passage was larger and brighter than she expected, big enough to pass a horse on either side of the long, knobbly metal pipe and lit by long, flickering tubes. It curved off endlessly, no exits in sight.

  Voices echoed behind them, and Simeon picked up the pace. But he was lifting Jeremiah by her left arm, which she could no longer feel, but which jolted her torso with every step. Dizzy with pain and hunger, body swinging back and forth, the metal Scarab tugging at her, she cried out.

  “Quiet!” Simeon hissed, pulling her quickly sideways behind a metal box. He curled his arm around her to clamp around her mouth. Jeremiah winced but nodded, face squeezed up tight. After a moment listening, Simeon resumed.

  They pressed on, seemingly forever, and first she thought they’d make it.

  But grabbing her tight had done something to her attachment to the Scarab. The pain worsened, and even though Jeremiah did not scream, the thing began keening inside her. Intense hunger cramped her gut—then it lessened slightly, as Jeremiah felt things sliding within her.

  She screamed when she realized the thing was doing more than deepening its hold.

  “Damn it!” Simeon said. “Can’t you keep quiet—”

  “I can’t help it,” Jeremiah said, voice half a wail. “It’s eating me!”

  I’m sorry, the Scarab said inside her. I’m sorry. But I’m so hungry!

  There was a clang from far behind them, and Simeon cursed again. “Double damn it,” he said, dragging her out of the tunnel into a wide chamber filled top to bottom with machinery and wires. Voices rang out around them—apparently Lord Christopherson had equipped each team with an aerograph. Simeon cursed, glancing around quickly, then pulled her towards another tunnel.

  “How do you know which way to go?” Jeremiah whispered.

  “Just following the tubes,” Simeon responded.

  The sign above the tunnel labeled it MAIN LINAC GALLERY, and unlike the curved tunnel they’d come from, this one stretched forever into the distance. This claustrophobic square shaft was dominated by a thick silver pipe wrapped every few meters by a cluster of machines, hanging beneath an infinite row of bare electric bulbs hanging like fruit from the ceiling.

  I’m so hungry, the Scarab moaned within her. So hungry, with nothing to eat—

  “Can’t . . . can’t we get you something to eat?” Jeremiah murmured.

  “What?” Simeon said. “I’m not hungry—”

  “Not you, the monster,” Jeremiah said.

  I can’t eat, the Scarab said. I’m so hungry, but I can’t eat any more—

  “Why can’t you eat?” Jeremiah said. “Why can’t I feed you?”

  You can’t. You shouldn’t. But you are. You dare not feed me any more—you’re my only food!

  “Oh God,” Jeremiah said. Nothing left to eat—the monster was reaching some point of no return, where easy harvest of fat and muscle would give way to consumption of more important structures. Hunger surged again, swelling to a crescendo—then was blotted out by a white hot thread of pain . . . and a perverse flood of deliciousness. God. She could taste what it tasted as it ate her! Jeremiah grimaced, biting her lip till blood flowed. “God, it hurts—”

  I’m sorry, the Scarab responded. I can’t help it. I’m so sorry—

  The shouts sounded closer now, echoing down the tunnel, and Simeon cursed. “Damn it, they’re gaining on us. All right,” he said, pulling her, with difficulty, underneath the pipe and over to the other side, “we have to do this a different way.”

  Jeremiah blinked with pain as the Scarab swung backwards, jolting her head back; then she saw Simeon had found a door l
abeled KLYSTRON GALLERY.

  “This goes to the upper level,” he said, glancing up the stairwell. “I’ll hold them off—showily. You get to the top, to those outbuildings, and follow Jackson’s plan.”

  Then he held out the deranger.

  “I’ll never get off a shot,” Jeremiah said.

  “Damn it, take it,” he said. “Never give up hope.”

  Jeremiah pursed her lips. “Never give up hope,” she said, seizing the deranger. “If I ever survive this with some remaining faculties, I very much hope we find some opponent the both of us can fight together. Thank you, sir.”

  “Make the effort worth it, Commander,” Simeon said, ducking back under the pipe—then firing a blast of his own deranger. Jeremiah heard a body slump, and then Simeon ran, crying, “Come get us, you bastards!”

  Jeremiah stepped backwards into the stairwell, leaning on the wall. Soon she stood in darkness; a moment later flickering torchlight and sizzling electric beams began tracing back and forth across the passageway before her.

  The door closed with a click.

  Jeremiah sagged. Simeon certainly was meeting danger with extreme boldness, just like she would—but from the outside, she could see it was no kind of strategy. Certainly he’d hold them off for a while, then they’d get him—and start combing this tunnel. Sooner or later they’d find her—and take her back to that chamber . . . and that drill.

  Jeremiah hissed. She’d been an idiot to let things get this far, when a three-story drop had just been at her disposal! Then she recalled the Owl’s words: she might die, but the thing would just repair itself, feeding on her broken body until some poor sap got too close—and it latched on to them. No, she had to let the thing feed on her until it tried to pupate. Then they could die.

  She felt another metal thread sliding into her body.

  “Never give up,” she said, straightening and climbing the stair.

  Just like the Linac Gallery below, the Klystron Gallery stretched off into infinity. It was wider, occupied by an endless series of humming machines, great congeries of pipes wrapped round angry red barrels labeled DANGER.